This is a new series on the blog. The hope is to give light to the lives of guides and not just focus on the climbing.

The focus of this series is less about the "how to" of climbing / guiding and more about the personal side instead.

This first post, An Unpleasant Start, is a new series on the ups and downs of being a guide: from networking trips gone wrong, to personal sacrifices (money, relationships, travel, climbing for work's sake vs. having fun), and how a hired trip can start off bad and end up good. It's about being young and learning.

BTW - if there are any guides out there who would like to contribute, please let me know. We're looking for different perspectives.

This is a new series on the blog. The hope is to give light to the lives of guides and not just focus on the climbing.

The focus of this series is less about the "how to" of climbing / guiding and more about the personal side instead.

This first post, An Unpleasant Start, is a new series on the ups and downs of being a guide: from networking trips gone wrong, to personal sacrifices (money, relationships, travel, climbing for work's sake vs. having fun), and how a hired trip can start off bad and end up good. It's about being young and learning.

This is a new series on the blog. The hope is to give light to the lives of guides and not just focus on the climbing.

The focus of this series is less about the "how to" of climbing / guiding and more about the personal side instead.

This first post, An Unpleasant Start, is a new series on the ups and downs of being a guide: from networking trips gone wrong, to personal sacrifices (money, relationships, travel, climbing for work's sake vs. having fun), and how a hired trip can start off bad and end up good. It's about being young and learning.

Oh my god.

Jay

I'm continuously impressed with how you can sum up the correct response to posts in so few words.

This is a new series on the blog. The hope is to give light to the lives of guides and not just focus on the climbing.

The focus of this series is less about the "how to" of climbing / guiding and more about the personal side instead.

This first post, An Unpleasant Start, is a new series on the ups and downs of being a guide: from networking trips gone wrong, to personal sacrifices (money, relationships, travel, climbing for work's sake vs. having fun), and how a hired trip can start off bad and end up good. It's about being young and learning.

Oh my god.

Jay

I'm continuously impressed with how you can sum up the correct response to posts in so few words.

If you would like to know how a guide feels and looks at a group and/or trip that he takes with him to wherever it might be, try looking up some well known guides and climbers and find books that they have wrote like "Thin Air" by Greg Child.

Yeah, I've read a few different books but not that one. I've been reading some of David Robert's books, Moment's of Doubt, Mountain of My Fear. It's got some of that sort of stuff. I've noticed a lot of people feel a lot of different ways so I kept with my perspective. I'll have a look at the library and see if I can find it.

My life as a guide and just as a climber has been in(*AN) epic failure

fixed that for you....

In reply to:

nice 5.10a called Life on the Run. The first half was easy, the total climb being only a little over 50 feet tall. Despite the easy first half I crammed the second half with more gear than necessary. I onsighted the climb but I couldn't bring myself to crawl more than a foot above my gear.

where exactly are you certified to guide through? EMS's standards would kick you out like immediately.

Have you never had a bad head day? Hence the comment about mileage. I think for most people their lead head improves over the course of a season. It's hard to do that when you climb the same hundred or so things all season long.

Have you never had a bad head day? Hence the comment about mileage. I think for most people their lead head improves over the course of a season. It's hard to do that when you climb the same hundred or so things all season long.

Perhaps you should read the whole thing.

the guides i know walk up the routes they are guiding in their sneakers, wet, blind folded and then solo them in the dark.

i'd be fucking pissed off if i hired a guide and he was shitting his pants on a 5.8.. screw that.

The following material from the blog pretty much says it all. And keep in mind that this is a direct quote.

The World's Most Melodramatic 'Guide' wrote:

I had a series of setbacks that started to destroy me mentally to the point where I wondered if I would ever go climbing again. I would end up going climbing but it would come at great cost.

And what was this "great cost"? Had to amputate a limb due to frostbite? Lost his climbing partner in an avalanche? Unable to be at his wife's deathbed because he was stranded in an ice cave in the Antarctic?

No. It was three traffic tickets: two for speeding, one for not wearing his seatbelt.

Wait, don't be so quick to judge. Perhaps 'bad head day' was a reference to how he got the cash to pay down the tickets. When guiding isn't raking in the big money and there's no prospects on the writing, sometimes you have to turn to the streets.

Have you never had a bad head day? Hence the comment about mileage. I think for most people their lead head improves over the course of a season. It's hard to do that when you climb the same hundred or so things all season long.

Perhaps you should read the whole thing.

the guides i know walk up the routes they are guiding in their sneakers, wet, blind folded and then solo them in the dark.

i'd be fucking pissed off if i hired a guide and he was shitting his pants on a 5.8.. screw that.